U.S. Navy To Take 4G Network To Sea

The Somali pirate-fighting mission by the U.S. Navy just got a new weapon: the 4G network. Although the initiative was launched last year, the two boats carrying the 4G LTE network are just finishing off testing the system in the North Atlantic before they set sail for the Persian Gulf. The idea of the system, a microwave-based wireless wide-area network, or WWAN, saysWired's Danger Room, is to free up existing bandwidth on the ships. And one big perk for the sailors on board the USS Kearsarge and USS San Antonio is this: free Android-powered LG phones! The 4G-trained sailors and marines will be able to use the devices to call, text, and transfer data to anywhere within a radius of 20 nautical miles. Helicopter crews will be able to shoot videos of the pirates and then send the footage to the ships or patrol boats for analysis.

My writing career has taken me all round the houses over the past decade and a half--from grumpy teens and hungover rock bands in the UK, where I was born, via celebrity interviews, health, tech and f…